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Abstract

”The history of classical antiquity is a history of men, though it is never studied that way. We have been taught to see it as the history of Western civilization, not simply as a history, one of many strands of a broader classical past, what makes us what we are today. The aim of this book is to question the deep-set assumption that men’s history speaks and has always spoken for all of us ”.

Although some feminist scholars have been suspicious of a move that seemingly puts men at the centre once more, the absence of an analysis of masculinity as a constructed category reinforces the notion that masculinity is a natural, normative, or essential mode of being- a category immune to deconstruction. This study is founded on the conviction that gender categories are deeply embedded and entangled in the symbolic systems of any culture. It also assumes that such symbolic systems are open to analysis, critique and deconstruction”

“This leads to two hermeneutical points that are important for the approach taken here. First, a fundamental premise of my approach concerns the complex reciprocal relationship between text and context. Rather than assuming that literary texts reflect the historical reality, I follow literary critics in considering how text take part in the construction of reality, both in the past and the present. Texts help to shape the context of which they are part. This means that the New Testament writings are both shaped by and helped shape cultural expression of masculinity, divinity, power, and authority”